Dashcam

234

Now Implemented!

Description

Offer a built-in hidden dash-mounted camera to record accidents.

Competitive/Pricing/Notes

Very few car makers offer a dashcam. The Corvette offers a 720p dashcam as a $1795 option on the base car.

Always-on dashcams are useful to identify vandalism while parked.

A good third-party HD dashcam (single direction) costs about $100-200 and a two-channel (front and back) dashcam for about $350, plus installation.

Update: The front AP1 autopilot camera is not usable as a dashcam. It is only connected to the autopilot hardware and does not connect to the main CPU. It is fairly low resolution, has a narrow field of view, is monochrome/red, and uses a non-standard 36 fps rate.

Update 2: The AP2 camera set is better situated to be used as a dashcam. All but the rear camera are medium resolution, but they do use a monochrome/red pixel arrangement for higher sensitivity. With enough processor power (an unknown) the images could be processed into a cyan/red sort of duotone image.

Most of the available flash memory is used for maps and caching, so with the current design, even if can record there may only be room for a limited amount of recording. Perhaps Tesla can record to a customer-supplied USB flash drive, although the bandwidth may not be high enough for a full 8 camera recording.

Status

Implemented in V9 software in October 2018. It can record front, sides, and rear in full color while driving and parked (for HW2.5 cars only, made in August 2017 or later). Older HW2.0 cars can be retrofitted with AP 3.0 hardware and MCU2 and get the full dashcam features.

(voting combined from a close duplicate that has been removed)


Category: CY3XS Applies to:
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     Created 13-Jun-2013
edanad
1,116

21 Comments

with 8 cameras it would be great to offer dashcam features indeed.

I got  my door badly scratched in a parking the other day and it would have helped finding the culprit.
    Created 2-Jun-2017
External dash cams require installation, and clutter up the vehicle. Splitting off the video feed from the existing front and rear cameras and recording that would cost Tesla a pittance.
    Created 24-Oct-2016
The Tesla already has a rear HD camera and Auto Pilot uses a front camera as well.

Even if, as Manchu76 said, the front camera is dedicated to the Auto Pilot and can't be recorded, HD cameras are fairly small these days, couldn't another one be added to the same enclosure? Or make the enclosure a little bigger, it's not like it's in the way...

Streaming video over a phone network would be pretty slow, we'd be better off recording to SD card, and uploading over Wi-Fi when we get back home. Having a microSD card slot hidden in the glove box (or elsewhere) would mean even if the car couldn't be driven after the accident the card could be removed so you can take the footage to show your insurer/the police.

This could give you front and rear footage (though the rear camera probably gets dirty all the time - the one on my Lexus does), if it's on a overwrite loop connected the the car's crash sensors (like what deploys the airbags) it would require no input from the owner/driver. Options could be included on the display to control how long it records for before overwriting, and also an option to manually stop the overwriting (in case you are following a car that is in an accident, for example, and want to keep the footage).

And maybe, just maybe, it might bring the cost of insurance down slightly...? We can live in hope.
    Created 1-Nov-2015
Dash-cams are more and more common and being used especially to prove that one is not responsible for an incident.  There are several posts on forums about installing them on the Model S and it's obviously non-trivial, especially as there is no obvious place from which to get power - there is only 1 12v socket, which you might need for a phone and, anyway, it's in the wrong place to power a camera.

Since the car already has front and rear cameras - even if they are at the moment doing other jobs - it really does seem obvious to make them able to record.  Recordings could be saved in a Cloud or on a USB stick, perhaps.  You'd need some software that let you play the files, including their GPS (position and speed) and G-force information.
    Created 26-Oct-2015
Maybe push video feed to app if camera is set to send alarms. Having dinner out and phone feeding live images would be wonderful.
    Created 22-Oct-2015
Option/add-on paid service to upload the video to the cloud? May be able to pay for it using subsidies from the insurance companies.
    Created 4-Oct-2015
external recorders very common in Asia, I think they get a insurance discount for having one.  All the hardware needed is in the car (camera, HD for recording and even LTE to do a cloud upload).
    Created 4-Oct-2015
The front camera is a 'Dedicated' camera. The scope of it's focus, is to read road lines, signs, ect. It is merely looking at a pixel count per square area, so as to compare what it sees to a known object. A.I.

I could be way off here,,,,
    Created 8-Sep-2015
Optional front and rear dash cam options would be popular.
In lieu of that front and rear dash cam mountings with power/fuse would be OK.
    Created 1-Sep-2015
fonguy
1,373
Front and rear dash cams would be a really good selling point.
    Created 30-Aug-2015
Given the latest cars now have the three necessary pieces of hardware.

Front camera; Back camera, USB port

Then it is just software to record the data from the two video feeds to the USB port where you could stick an SD card of whatever size met your needs.
    Created 27-Aug-2015
Needs to be readily uploaded to laptop via wifi.
    Created 3-Jun-2015
fonguy
1,373
This does seem like such a no-brainer - especially so given that all the camera hardware is already fitted.  I think a separate unit for actually doing the recording would be preferable than relying on the car existing hardware.  I would think it not difficult to 'borrow' the car's cameras for this purpose.
    Created 1-Apr-2015
The hardware is already available in new models, not sure since when.
    Created 1-Apr-2015
DAsh Cam is a no brainer
    Created 31-Mar-2015
A front and rear dash cam factory option is a no brainer.

 
    Created 31-Mar-2015
Would be good to activate automatically when away from car and some thing or some one damages car.  Activated by car sensors.
    Created 4-Jan-2015
Would absolutely love that feature; make sure you can export that data maybe through the website and/or App????
    Created 6-Oct-2014
I would also like to see a proper front and rear dash cam factory option.
    Created 3-Oct-2014
JVU
313
record the high definition back-up camera as well
    Created 14-Aug-2013